Bugs that eat roads and buildings. Biocatalysts that break down fuel
and plastics. Devices that stealthily corrode aluminium and other metals.
These are just a few of the non-lethal weapons that the US has tried to
develop, or is trying to develop.

But quite how close such weapons are to reality we may never know. The
US National Academy of Sciences is refusing to release dozens of reports
proposing or describing their development, even though the documents are
supposed to be public records.

The academy is justifying its unprecedented reticence by citing security
concerns after 11 September. But campaigners think the real reason is that
the research violates both US law and international treaties on chemical
and biological weapons.

The documents in question were collected in 2001 by a panel of academic
and industry scientists set up by the NAS to evaluate recent non-lethal
weapons research for the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program. The
US took an increased interest in non-lethals after its disastrous peacekeeping
mission in Somalia in 1993, when rioting civilians killed American soldiers.

The panel, whose report is due out later in 2002, collected 147 reports
and proposals from researchers, many of them funded by the JNLWP. One group
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, for example, proposes using
intense electromagnetic fields to produce effects "ranging from the disruption
of short-term memory to total loss of control of voluntary bodily functions".
Others propose directed energy weapons.

Off the record

In March, as is usual with non-classified studies by the NAS, they were
deposited with the academy's Public Access Records Office, and their titles
were released (see table). "These documents are supposed to be public,"
says Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a group campaigning against biological
weapons. When he asked the records office to see 77 of the documents, it
agreed to hand them over.

"But two days later the NAS pulled the documents," says Hammond. "Kevin
Hale, the NAS security officer, told me it was because someone had expressed
concern." Who did so is not clear. The pressure for the clampdown does
not appear to have come from the JNLWP itself, because last week it sent
Hammond eight documents he had requested, including three on the NAS list.

New Scientist could not get hold of Hale. "We are still formulating
our response to the Sunshine people," is all an assistant would say. But
the few reports that Hammond did obtain make interesting reading.

In 2000, New Scientist revealed that senior officials in the JNLWP want
to rewrite the chemical and biological weapons treaties to give themselves
more freedom to develop non-lethal weapons. The reports make it clear that
research that violates the treaties has been under way since the 1990s.

Eating tarmac

One 1998 funding application from the Office of Naval Research proposes
creating genetically engineered microorganisms that would corrode roads
and runways, and produce "targeted deterioration of metal parts, coatings
and lubricants of weapons, vehicles and support equipment, as well as fuels".

The plan was to isolate genes for enzymes that attack materials such
as Kevlar, asphalt, cement, paints or lubricants, and put them into microbes
that churn them out in large quantities. The bugs were to be engineered
to self-destruct after wreaking havoc.

It is not clear how many of these ideas have actually been realised.
But the group has already patented a microorganism that would decompose
polyurethane, "a common component of paint for ships and aircraft", including
stealth anti-radar coatings.

Another 1998 proposal, from a biotech lab at Brooks Air Force Base near
San Antonio in Texas, was to refine "anti-material biocatalysts" already
under development. One of these involved a bacterial derivative that breaks
down organic molecules such as fuels and plastic.

Stink bombs

The proposal claims that such substances are exempt from biological
warfare restrictions. But that is not true, argues Mark Wheelis of University
of California, Davis.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972 prohibits the "development,
production, stockpiling or acquisition of biological agents or toxins"
other than for peaceful purposes. What is more, last year the US itself
introduced a law banning the possession of bioweapons, including microbes
designed to attack materials.

The withheld documents also include proposals to use stink bombs, sedatives
and opium derivatives as weapons, which Wheelis thinks would contravene
the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1992. This prohibits "any chemical which
... can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm".